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General discussion

Excruatingly slow internet speeds

Jun 9, 2005 7:07AM PDT

I have two computers set up to a home network running windows XP. I have a Viewsonic wireless router, but I have wired connections. They normally have internet speeds of nearly 4 mbps. All of a sudden (over night) my speed on one, and only one, of my computers dropped to 750 kbps. I've tried rebooting the computer,router and modem, setting my router back to default settings and starting over, running 4 different antispyware programs on the effected computer, running an antivirus scan, booting in safe mode, switching router ports, and nothing seems to work. My other computer is running just fine off the same router.

I think it's got to be either a computer hardware or software issue, since the other computer is fine using the same modem and router. Everything was OK when I went to work in the morning and the computer seems to run OK, but IE and Firefox are excruciatingly slow.

Could it be my network card? Any other ideas?

Discussion is locked

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Do you use a firewall
Jun 9, 2005 10:53AM PDT

like Zone Alarm 5.x ?

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Not since enabling WEP encryption on my router....
Jun 12, 2005 12:35PM PDT

I have my router setup with WEP encryption, so I turned off my software firewall. Since the problem started I have turned on the firewall, but still have the same problems. I am using the PC-cillin firewall. I also tried another computer just to rule out the cable or the router and it worked fine.

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-_-
Jun 12, 2005 12:46PM PDT

Stop being so paranoid, you'll be fine. -_-
The world is not out to hack your computer, you know...

Try turning off all firewalls, security, and anything else that interferes with traffic.

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Actually, I'm not paranoid at all.......
Jun 13, 2005 9:54AM PDT

I had my firewalls turned off. I had my router encrypted more so I wasn't paying for the neighbors to surf the web on my account than anything else. I had my firewalls turned off.

Now this is really strange. I unplugged the computer and let it sit for a couple of days and then hooked it back up and........it works! No idea why, I didn't do anything different. I still have a problem though, my Google and Yahoo results are hijacked. The first 10 or so results are junk. haven't been able to fix this with spyware removal tools yet, but this is probably a subject for a different forum.

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spyware will do that to you...
Jun 14, 2005 4:44AM PDT

First try the usual spyware cleaners: SpyBot Search and Destroy, or AdAware, or if using WindowsXP or 2K, the Microsoft Spyware/Malware tool. Be aware that many of the other free utilities out there offering to remove spyware are in fact spyware themselves, preying on people's gullibility.

dw

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Tried that first.
Jun 14, 2005 3:21PM PDT

I thought it was probably Spyware. The only 4 spyware removal programs I use are Spybot, Ad-Aware, Microsoft AntiSpyware and Spy Sweeper. None of these seemed to do anything, but it's working now, so maybe it did and just needed a total shutdown. I'm just happy it's working.